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Vain Fortune by George (George Augustus) Moore
page 122 of 203 (60%)
'And would you have him married?' asked John Norton.

'Certainly. I imagine him living in a tiny little house somewhere near the
river--Westminster or Chelsea. His wife would be a dreadful person, thin,
withered, herring-gutted--a sort of red herring with a cap. But his
daughter would be charming, she would have inherited her father's features.
I can imagine these women living in admiration of this man, tending on him,
speaking very little, removed from worldly influences, seeing only the
young men who come every Tuesday evening to listen to the poet's
conversation--I don't hear them saying much--I can see them sitting in a
corner listening for the ten thousandth time to aestheticisms not one word
of which they understand, and about ten o'clock stealing away to some
mysterious chamber. Something of the poet's sterility would have descended
upon them.'

'That is how you imagine _un génie raté_,' said Phillips. 'Your
conception is clear enough; why don't you write the book?'

'Because there is nothing more to say on the subject. It is a subject for a
sketch, not for a book. But of this I'm sure, that the dry-rock man would
come out more clearly in a book than the soft, insipid, gentle,
companionable, red-bearded fellow.'

'If Price were the dry, sterile nature you describe, we should feel no
interest in him, we should not be discussing him as we are,' said Phillips.

'Yes, we should--Price suffers; we're interested in him because he
suffers--because he suffers in public--"I never was happy except on those
rare occasions when I thought I was a great man." In that sentence you'll
find the clew to his attractiveness. But in him there is nothing of the
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